set me free
by trebleclef2011
Summary: "What's your name?" Korra says, sitting down in the chair opposite his. "Mako," he says simply, refusing to elaborate. He continues smoking as he looks across the room, his target slipping away into the night. Shit, he thinks. "Yours?" he says, taking a sip of whiskey, his objective compromised for the night. Dangerous woman, he thinks. "noir" AU. written for makorra week 2


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I. song

The first time he sees her is in a club in Ba Sing Se. He sits in the corner, alone, drinking his sake as he looked at the woman on stage.

She is stunning, her dark skin shining in the spotlight, her dark blue dress shimmering as she walks on to stand in front of the microphone. Her hair is long and brown, falling in waves down her back. She's wearing heels too high for walking, but she pulls it off, not letting the crowd see her weak, see her stumble. Her lashes are long, but the thing that draws his gaze to her the most are her hypnotic eyes.

They are so blue, and as she looks around the room, he has an unconscious urge to catch her gaze.

He pulls his hat down over his eyes, guarding them from her gaze, because even though he craves it, if she noticed him, and noticed what he was, they would both be in overwhelming trouble. He can't get involved with anyone...he can't pull anyone into the web of deceit and murder that he's been forced into himself.

Unable to stop himself, he looks up again, and her eyes - sapphire or turquoise, or a mix of the two - pierce him, and he can't move from his seat as she begins to sing.

Her voice is soft, and breathy - low for a woman, but that's what makes her performance so enticing and sensual - and Mako cannot move. He can't even imagine moving. He takes his hat off, and leans forward in his seat. He takes another drink of sake as she closes her eyes, becoming caught up in the feeling of performing, forgetting where she is.

She notices his golden eyes, his gaze hot on the naked skin of her exposed back, her face, and her eyes, when she finishes the song and looks up. She makes her exit shortly afterward, and bows before leaving the stage.

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Mako stares after her as she walks - sways - away, and his gaze is glued to her hips. She turns after her, capturing his eyes again.

He then determines that he cannot ever see this woman again - this woman with soft curves and a gaze that paralyzes him where he sits - because she could undo him. She could, with those eyes, and the smirk she gives him as she walks away, completely destroy him.

So, he decides, he just won't take the chance.

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II. identity

The next time they meet, it is in a tavern in the Fire Nation. He is smoking a cigar when she walks in, looking completely different than before in a blue pinstripe suit. She's wearing pants now, and her hair is tied up tight in a ponytail. He almost doesn't recognize her, but for the shape of her body and the blue of her eyes, which he notices from across room. He's sitting in the corner, inconspicuous as always as he tails a Fire Nation official, the next hit on his list. His orders brought him here this time, not a simple paid vacation with the added perk of visiting his brother in his home. Mako feels more at home in the Fire Nation, not necessarily in this disgusting bar, where women are touched inappropriately. Mako feels sick as he watches old rich men and young prostitutes - he's supposed to say "call girls" - canoodle and flirt in front of him.

It's just a job, he thinks. It'll be over soon. He can go somewhere else.

But then he realizes that it's not just a job. It's his life. It's what he was forced to as a teenager to protect his younger brother from the harsh punishment his now-employer would have forced on him. He would have stripped Bolin of his bending. He would have taken it away from him forever, leaving him a husk of a man. He had been a boy at the time, and Mako would have done anything to protect him. He's still doing it, at the age of twenty-four, as his brother grows up, still as much of an earthbender as the day Mako left him to act as Amon's hit man.

Mako himself remains untouched, his firebending intact as he travels around to do Amon's dirty work. It makes him feel dirty, and he doesn't enjoy doing it. Amon had threatened him with his brother's bending a long time ago, and his own, but since then, he's been threatening him with more than that. He's threatened him with his life, and his brother's.

So he can't stop...he can't leave, he can't get out. He's stuck. He's forever stuck.

But when he sees those eyes again, he feels a little freer, though he can't get any closer.

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Korra sees the man again, dressed in black with a red scarf around his suit, cut to perfection. She looks at his golden eyes once more, remembering him from that night in Ba Sing Se when she was charged with protecting a councilman on leave to visit his daughter on her twentieth birthday, and the day of her wedding.

She looks at those eyes again, but sits at the bar, ordering a Red Lotus to take the edge off the night. She's not on duty now, taking a short break from her meetings with the current Fire Lord to visit the corners of his nation, getting to know his people. She sips the drink, the flavors of lychee and cranberry reminding her of warm summers on Air Temple Island years ago. She puts the hat she'd brought with her on the counter, ordering another drink from the barkeep when hers runs low.

But she's seen this man before. She knows his type - very, very well. He studies people, learning their type, and the easiest ways to kill them. He's an assassin, a hit man, and the exact type of person she is trained to deal with in combat and in situations where politician may be killed due to animosity from revolutionary political groups - dangerous ones.

So she smirks at him again, appreciating the talent she knows he has, and scans the vicinity of the tavern, looking around the seedy populace for the man he has his eye on.

She recognizes the man, knowing that he is a rotten scum, but although he is, she cannot allow the assassin to kill that politician. So she does something she's never done before.

Korra makes the first move.

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Walking over, she sees him start as he watches her approach. She sits down at the two - person table he's taking up all by himself. She looks at his form, noticing how big he is. Though seated, the assassin is big, his body taking up most of the space around the tiny table where his glass of fire whiskey sits on a coaster as he sips it, scoping out his target.

"What's your name?" Korra says, sitting down in the chair opposite his.

"Mako," he says simply, refusing to elaborate. He continues smoking as he looks across the room, his target slipping away into the night. _Shit_, he thinks. "Yours?" he says, taking a sip of whiskey, his objective compromised for the night.

Dangerous woman, he thinks, looking back at her, her blue - eyed gaze sly across the table. He tries to mask his disappointment.

"Korra," she says, smiling back at him.

And he can't help but smile back.

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III. fight

The third time they meet is at a coup staged at City Hall, and his target is Councilman Tenzin - the man who practically raised her, who taught her to airbend, who gave her the tools she needed to find her spirituality. He led her to become the fully realized Avatar she was today. She was now the finest agent the Order of the White Lotus had to offer, but her actual status is kept quiet to avoid the wrath of the organizations that would seek to end her. Organizations like the one Mako is forced to kill for. And that's what he's done - kill - and he feels terrible every day he's alive. He's thought about doing away with himself, but remembers how much he loves and needs his brother, and how much his brother needs him, and stops for fear that his suicide would lead to his brother's murder.

She runs at him immediately when he lunges at her old mentor, and her firebending is hotter than ever. His eyes open incredibly wide as he notices her bending the fire, because he clearly didn't know who she was before. She's the spitting image of Water Tribe, and she's firebending. He suspects it, and when she shoves him back with a wall of earth from the floor, trapping him against the wall and forming manacles to hold his wrists as she approaches him, a ball of flame in her right hand.

He breathes heavily, not struggling against the bonds as she comes impossibly closer, a murderous intent in those blue eyes, the ones that could level him instantly. He looks at them, suddenly feeling the guilt of all his past murders weigh down on him. He'd done it for Bolin, but he feels weak against her judgement. He hangs his head.

"I'm sorry," he says, but knows that this defeat will test Amon's trust in him. He has to continue this fight, but every time he is faced with Korra's gaze, glare, quick looks, every time she lays his eyes on him, every time they connect, he hates what he is, because he knows what she is, and he's a killer. A monster. A thief of life and time. But he can't get caught up in her...Bolin would die. It would be over for his sweet brother training in the Earth Kingdom capital who knows nearly nothing of his job.

"Save it," she says. "You're under arrest."

He's taken into custody, and as he walks behind her, he notices her back, and the tension in her muscles as she walks, pained, away to put him in the police car, makes him feel guiltier than anything ever could.

Because he'd hurt her.

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IV. impulse

The charges against him are dropped because they can't actually prove anything - that's how good he was at his job. Was. Past-tense. Because he had stopped.

He just hadn't told Amon yet.

He still travels around, reporting that he's being thwarted by impossible coincidence time and time again. It goes on for months until he finds her again. Well, they find each other. They weren't looking. It happens outside the bending arena that he'd heard about in the city - long ago, when he was a different person.

"What are you doing here?" Korra asks, equal parts betrayed and furious with him. She'd liked him a lot, but she'd known what he was from the moment she met him.

"I'm asking for your help."

"What?"

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Korra listens to his story about his brother, leaving him in Ba Sing Se to live his life with a foster family, the price being his services. She can't believe him, though, until he finally looks at her and she sees the pain in his eyes. She's never been fascinated by eyes, but his are pretty beguiling, though she is about one lie away from hating him and adding him to her blacklist, along with that horrible revolutionary, Amon. She knows now about his life, about his acting to prevent his brother from dying at the hands of that horrible man. She used to be scared of him, a little, and then attracted to him, and then disgusted by him, but now she pities him. She doesn't know what to do.

"Can you get me a way out?" Mako asks. "I can't do this anymore. I need my brother to be safe, but I cannot kill anymore. It doesn't matter who it is. I can't. I won't. I need to get out. I need to be free."

Korra sighs, knowing what it feels like to want to be free, but unable to imagine what he's gone through for the nine years he's been forced to kill to protect his brother. She recognizes the hardness on his heart, and is amazed at his ability to want a way out.

"Come with me."

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V. assignment

Her plan is a slow one...he has to show Amon that he's trustworthy, and Mako, by her advice, goes to him to accept one final mission.

The hit this time is a woman, a short woman with blue eyes of Water Tribe heritage who was raised in the South Pole. A woman who stands directly in the way of Amon's rise to power. It's the Avatar.

It's Korra.

He holds in his disgust, masking all of his emotions as Amon delivers the information to him.

"She lives in Republic City. She's the top agent of the Order of the White Lotus, and she stays in a private apartment on Air Temple Island. I want the hit done tonight. It's your final warning, Mako, or I will purify your brother. And then," Amon says, his low voice full of ice and malice, "I will purify you."

Mako waits until he's back on the island, in the caves beneath it, where he meets with Korra (nobody else knows it's there, so that's where he stays for the time being. He's a wanted criminal who nobody has been able to pin down, but Korra can do it with a look.) and tries to put off telling her. He manages to succeed for a total of twenty-six minutes.

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VI. you

"What's the big deal?" Korra asks, handing Mako a bowl of noodles as she tears into the one she brought for herself. "You have a hit, now we'll figure out how to 'get rid'" she uses air quotes to emphasize the fact that no killing will be taking place with her involved, "of the person you're supposed to kill. It's easy. We'll explain the situation...Tenzin already knows, so you'll be fine. It'll be fine," she says, putting her hand on his shoulder as he stared into the bowl.

"I can't even pretend anymore," he says.

"Who's the hit?" Korra asks, at first merely curious.

Mako doesn't answer, his silence implying the worst.

"Mako," she turns his face toward her so she can see the whites of his eyes. "Who is the hit?"

"It's you," he says, his voice at first loud and broken. "It's you," he repeats more quietly, his voice almost a whisper. The pain in it shatters Korra like ice in her heart, freezing her, paralyzing her.

"I've had assassins before," Korra says finally, but the widening of her eyes destroys him. "We'll deal with it." He's been assigned to kill Korra, the only person outside of his family that he's ever ever trusted. The only person who has ever given him a second chance.

And he's supposed to kill her.

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After a long time in the dark cave, Korra opens her palm. The light from the sun on the horizon has disappeared with the hours of the day and she ignites a fire in her hand, using its light to see Mako's face as they discuss how to deal with his assignment to kill her.

"What about what I said before?" Korra says. "We could fake my death. Then you could report that to Amon."

"We're not faking your death."

"Why not?"

"No, Korra," Mako says, his golden eyes blazing.

She sits silent for a minute before looking back at him. She grabs his shoulder abruptly, pulling his face toward hers. She bring the light in her hand closer.

"I know this might be a little invasive," Korra says, qualifying her childhood impulses. "but did Amon take your bending? Were you ever a bender?"

"What?"

Korra gestures pointedly to his golden eyes.

He answers her with his open palm, looking at her before he makes his own flame.

Korra gasps, looking right at him. "You never told me," she says.

"I had to keep it a secret," Mako says. "Amon used it as a bargaining chip against me, but he told me that he'd go through with my brother's cleansing if I showed anyone what I could do."

"I'm so sorry," Korra says, her voice faltering at the end of her apology.

"Don't be," Mako says.

They stare at each other, their faces heating due to the fire in their hands and the feeling in their hearts. Mako moves a bit closer, but Korra flinches away at the last second. It's still too soon, he realizes.

But now he knows what rejection tastes like.

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VII. realization

They decide to leave the city for awhile, going away together to roam the countryside. Korra tells only Tenzin, nobody else, and they run away on the polarbear dog Mako meets for the first time on the day they leave.

He sits behind her as she climbs onto the animal, anxious to leave, for some reason. He supposes she's frightened by the possibility of Amon finding them in the city and killing her himself, which she fears, but even more, she fears the possibility that he could take her bending. He hadn't done so with Mako, but that was for control. Korra is Amon's greatest threat and adversary. He'd already made plans to have her die by the hand of the most talented and deadly assassin in the entire world. Too bad he'd fallen for her sweet smile and rough voice, her womanly shape and her loud laugh, her eyes that reduce him to nothing and her soul that makes him wish for her to be his forever.

And that's when he realizes...he loves her. His greatest enemy, and he loves her enough to defy the most dangerous criminal in the world, risking his own skin and probably that of his brother.

And he would protect her with his life, even if she may not want him.

So they run.

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For a long time Korra wonders why in the hell he's bothering with holding onto the back of Naga's saddle when they're going to be riding for hours, days maybe, and eventually gets fed up with it.

"Why are you so far away?"

"Huh?" Mako is caught off guard. He never was before, but that was a long time ago. Last year, nothing could get at him except his brother, and now he's thrown by the mere mannerisms of the Avatar, who, despite her divine right, is the sassiest creature he's ever come across.

"Isn't that uncomfortable? Sitting on the edge of your seat like that?"

"I, uh, don't know?" Mako says, his face flushing awkwardly.

"Look, it' s not a bit deal. I don't bite," Korra says, half irritated and half teasing him.

Mako mumbles something that Korra doesn't understand, and scoots closer, wrapping his warm firebender arms around her stomach. Korra wanted this, so she doesn't understand the strange clenching in her heart when he does it, finally. An hour later, she's grateful for it as the snow begins to fall on them, Naga continuing to bound through the snow toward an unknown destination.

And when they arrive, Naga chattering as Korra and Mako dismount, setting up camp, Korra begins to feel the cold again and misses his arms around her as she settles into sleep, but not without stealing that scarf first.

Her reasoning, of course, is that it smells like him, but she doesn't admit it to anyone but herself, not even Naga, whose questioning look is ignored.

It's because she loves him.

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VIII. final

Korra and Mako have been running for weeks through the cold mountains beyond the city, through the earth kingdom, until they find themselves at the precipice of the northern ocean.

They stop there, using their various bending techniques to build a Water Tribe style igloo for them to stay in until this issue with Amon blew over.

They are safe for four days.

On that day, Mako jolts awake, looking toward the mouth of the igloo, where there is, of course, nothing. He looks around. He sees Korra on the other side of the igloo, sound asleep in animal furs and drooling as she lays against Naga. She stirs slightly when he gets up to check what's outside. Nobody lives near them; they're practically in the middle of nowhere, and for good reason. Mako knew how good Amon was, but he'd been diligent in covering their tracks.

He walked outside, looking around for the source of his disturbance.

And he sees it. Amon, with a gun, pointed directly at his head. It frightens him to no end, because he's seen and used these weapons, which Korra has never needed due to bending. But neither of them are metalbenders, so Mako has no defense against the bullets.

"You worthless firebender trash," Amon says, his mask in place over the fine thread of his suit, covered in an expensive black trench coat. Mako knows where the money came from to pay for it. He requisitioned it himself right after murdering the man who earned it. An inventor, he remembered. The man had begged. The sight of the suit makes him sick, and not just figuratively so. He steps aside, vomiting the fish Korra had caught and he had cooked for dinner into the snow.

Korra wakes up inside, getting up without bothering to put on her shoes and walks out into the snow barefoot. Mako tries to push her back inside the igloo but fails when she sees who it is.

"Amon," she says.

"Avatar," Amon responds. "You're supposed to be dead."

"Well, it looks like you're just shit out of luck today, aren't you?" she puts on that teasing smirk, the one that Mako would find precious and that Amon would find insulting.

"Korra, you know he has a gun, right?"

"Yeah, I know."

His reminder of her disadvantage only angers the cool tempered Amon more, causing him to point the gun more solidly in Mako's direction.

Mako goes to stand directly in front of Korra, a terrifying look of determination and hatred on his face, directed at the man who had stolen his childhood and nearly blackened his young heart forever.

"Don't test me, boy," Amon says. "I wouldn't attempt it." Amon suddenly pulls Mako's fully grown brother, Bolin, from behind a tree. He trains the gun on Bolin's head, ready to pull the trigger and end Bolin's life at any moment.

Mako sucks in a quick breath, looking quickly at Korra, who recognizes the naked fear in his eyes and in the set of his mouth. He's never looked like this.

Bolin looks at Mako, his eyes wide, and unable to say anything.

"That's him, isn't it?" Korra asks softly. "That's your brother."

"It is," Mako says succinctly.

"I'll handle it," she says, walking past Mako to take the gun from Amon's hand. She's in a kind of trance now, but intensely determined for the brother of the man she's found to be a better companion and a better friend than anyone. She's saved him before, so she thinks she'll do it again.

"Do not come any closer," Amon says, and Korra is suddenly paralyzed, frozen with her left foot in front of her right in the snow. Her toes are freezing, almost bleeding, and cracked from the cold seeping into her feet.

Amon aims the gun for Korra, and before she can take it from his grasp, because she is utterly frozen to her spot, he squeezes the trigger, and three things happen at once.

One: Mako sends a bolt of lightning at his old boss, catching him squarely in the chest and throwing him up against a tree. Two: Bolin stands, sending a hand out to stop the bullet. It stops where it meets Korra's neck, and instead of ripping her apart, it is like a pebble in the air, harmless. Three: Korra faints dead away, falling into the snow, where Mako picks her up and takes her back into the igloo, his brother following behind them.

Amon does not wake up, his body slowly freezing against the tree outside. It stays there.

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Inside the ice structure, it takes Mako four minutes to revive the Avatar, and when she suddenly opens her eyes again, he breathes a slow sigh of relief. Bolin stands in the corner, rubbing his wrists where they were sore from the paralysis he'd underwent as Amon took him from his home in Ba Sing Se. He looks over, happy for his brother, though he has never seen him this relieved in his entire life.

Mako grasps Korra's hand, looking back into her blue eyes which hold so many shades of emotion that his own can't hold in the tears spilling down his face.

"Are you alright?" he asks as she looks to him.

"I'm fine," Korra says. She reaches out to touch him, her thumb rubbing under his eye where the tears have made wet tracks down his face.

"I'm glad you're here."

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They leave the campsite the next day after proper introductions between Korra and Bolin, who seem to share an instant bond, their personalities somewhat similar.

Korra and Mako end up holding hands the entire way to Ba Sing Se, where they rest in an old tea shop while waiting for Bolin to tell his wife what happened to him while he was gone. He takes a while coming back to meet them and invite them into his home. They take the time to explore the city, having never seen it by the light of day before.

No, they'd only seen each other by night for the two years since they'd met, in this city, in some club that probably didn't run anymore.

Walking through the streets, Korra lifts Mako's hand, intertwined with hers, to her face, softly rubbing the back of his hand against her cheek, smiling like a lovestruck fool.

And that's when he knows that she's just as far gone as he is.

He presses his lips to her cheek before she turns, catching his chapped mouth with her own.

"I like doing that," Korra decides. "Let's do that again."

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